Mitt Romney was in town today for a fundraiser hosted by former Saks Inc. chairman and CEO Brad Martin. And it seems the former Massachusetts governor availed himself of an opportunity to show a cadre of the city’s business elite that he’s not the wooden caricature ascribed to him by the national press.

The event was closed to the press. But one attendee, from the financial services industry, described Mitt in his Memphis appearance this week as livelier than he’s seen him up to now.

Mitt lambasted federal agencies – specifically calling out the EPA – as hamstringing businesses with regulations that he says are getting in the way of job creation.

Mitt said Obama “is clueless about the economy.”

He also said that one of his first acts as president would be to grant a waiver to every state to exempt it from “Obamacare” until such time as the president’s signature health care legislation could be repealed.

Meanwhile, that sound you hear in the distance is a Texas twang. It belongs to Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who will be in town next week at the Memphis Botanic Garden for a fundraiser of his own.